1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology of inspection for neurological disorder etc.
This application claims the foreign priority benefit under Title 35, United States Code, §119 (a)-(d), of Japanese Patent Application No. 2008-273397, filed on Oct. 23, 2008, in the Japan Patent Office, the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
2. Related Art
In recent years, a rapidly increasing number of patients (hereinafter called “neurological disorder patients”) suffer from neurological disorders e.g. Parkinson's disease or cerebral apoplexy in Japan. For example, Parkinson's disease has four major symptoms: tremor; muscle rigidity (i.e. continuous involuntary sustained muscle contraction); postural instability (i.e. impaired balance and coordination); and bradykinesia (i.e. slowing of physical movement). Human movement is controlled by a brain which emits a bioelectric instruction signal of making body movement, and the body movement is realized by muscle which contracts upon receiving the bioelectric instruction signals through the nervous system. However, a neurological disorder patient exhibits abnormal movement or coordination since a bioelectric instruction signal emitted from a brain and instructing for making body movement cannot be transmitted through a nervous system accurately.
The rapidly growing number of neurological disorder patients may lead to not only increased medical cost but also huge social loss since these patients are hardly employable. Therefore, in order to solve a social problem caused by these neurological disorders, we must be able to accurately determine whether a test subject person (hereinafter called subject person) suffers from a neurological disorder or not, and to what degree the neurological disorder has progressed if the person is ailing.
However, the fact of ailment and degree of its progression cannot be determined by hemanalysis, or image diagnosis obtained by using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) since a neurological disorder patient is not distinguishable from a non-diseased person. Therefore, in many cases, the fact of ailment and degree of its progression are determined based on subjective view of an inspector, e.g. a doctor, empirically or based on his or her insight. In consideration of such a background, finger movement tests are widely used to monitor fingertips' movement of a person for evaluating to what degree his or her motility has decreased and how seriously his or her autonomic nerve system is dysfunctional due to Parkinson's disease.
In order to monitor the fingertips' movement, various methods are conceived using an electric switch, a metal loop, a keyboard, or a three-dimensional camera. However, these methods are used not so widely because none of them can be carried out easily.
To address this situation, the applicant of the present application formerly proposed a bioinstrument device which uses magnetic sensors and is capable of detecting human body movement, e.g., continuous tapping movement (hereinafter called finger-tapping movement) of two fingers, e.g. the thumb and the forefinger of one of test subject person's hands) (see Japan Patent No. 3,841,075, hereinafter called Patent Document 1). The technology disclosed in Patent Document 1 is capable of determining whether a person is a neurological disorder patient or a non-diseased person very accurately by analyzing information obtained from the finger-tapping movement to recognize the two fingers' movement of the subject person.
However, whether the subject person is a neurological disorder patient or a non-diseased person cannot be determined in consideration of the finger-tapping force since a pushing force produced in the finger-tapping movement by the two fingers is not obtainable in the technology disclosed in Patent Document 1. In many cases, a neurological disorder patient shakes or grips an article with a significantly weaker force than that of a non-diseased person. The applicant believes that a finger-tapping force is significantly different between a neurological disorder patient and a non-diseased person even though a two fingers' movements resemble between the neurological disorder patient and the non-diseased person.